Our flag goes off to the
unclean landscapes, and our dialect drowns out the drum.

In the cities we'll feed
the most cynical prostitution. We'll massacre the logical
revolts.

On to the lands of rain
and spices! - in the service of the most hideous exploitation,
industrial or military.

Goodbye here, hello
anywhere. Draftees of good will, our philosophy will be ferocious;
stupid in science, debauched in comfort; let the world go to hell.
The real war. Forward, march!

(trans. Scott
Bates)

attila gerecz

My Legacy

Insignificant
poems.

Soot rising in the sad
light

From a burial
torch.

For the briefest time they
will float like stains

On the freckled and
indifferent sky.

(trans. Robert
Bly)

barbara
lamorticella:

War Pond

So now the frogs of war
are croaking

from their pond of
fire

and all the haters of
peace, emboldened

croak back

They have only two
notes:

Kill
Take

Kill
Take

John Ashcroft Orders the
Bare Breast of Justice

Covered on the Floor of
theSenate

he must want to

stop jiggling

wipe out round
get

total
control
costs

more zeroes

than anybody
can ever

possibly
pay

so everyone ends up

totally (dead)

barbara zelano:

As our country

pushes us deeper

into the dark night

of the soul

in the name of god

I wonder if

Persephone and I

would be better off

to stay

underground.

bei dao:

All

All is fated

all cloudy,

all an endless
beginning,

all a search for what
vanishes,

all joys grave,

all griefs
tearless,

every speech a
repetition,

every meeting a first
encounter,

all love buried in the
heart,

all history prisoned in a
dream,

all hope hedged with
doubt,

all faith drowned in
lamentation.

Every explosion heralds an
instant of stillness,

every death reverberates
forever.

(trans. Donald
Finkel)

benjamin
perét:

Little Song of the
Maimed

Lend me your
arm

to replace my
leg

The rats ate it for
me

at Verdun

at Verdun

I ate lots of
rats

but they didn't give me
back my leg

and that's why I was given
the CROIX DE GUERRE

and a wooden
leg

and a wooden
leg

(trans. David
Gascoyne)

bob kaufman:

from
Benediction

America, I forgive you ...
I forgive you

Nailing black Jesus to an
imported cross

Every six weeks in Dawson,
Georgia.

America, I forgive you ...
I forgive you

Eating black children, I
know your hunger.

America, I forgive you ...
I forgive you

Burning Japanese babies
defensively -

I realize how necessary it
was.

Your ancestor had
beautiful thoughts in his brain.

His descendants are
experts in real estate.

Your generals have
mushrooming visions.

Every day your people get
more and more

Cars, televisions,
sickness, death dreams.

You must have been
great

Alive.

bodo murray:

Doggerell for a Washington
Holiday Lay-Over

Two hours between trains
in Washington, DC,

I decided to walk to the
Capitol and see.

A cold sun, blind and
blinding as a judge's eye

made me wear sunshades
against the bright sky.

The Capitol building was
cordoned like a hive

to construct a visitors'
center for 2005.

Everything now was closed
to the nation,

allowing me to see how
little separation

lay between the Capitol
and the High Court.

I wondered what John Adams
would retort

that in 2000, 5 Justices
had some fun

and made the Court and
Presidency one.

Both buildings were a dull
gray and sterile

though clean and
monumentally Neo-Classical.

An eerie silence disturbed
the December day;

President, Justices, and
Congress were away.

What will happen when they
return and find

someone's been snooping,
one not of their mind?

They'll not notice;
they're set on bombing

to a new unity, a sort of
national embalming.

carolyn kizer:

Gulf War

Tout le ciel vert se
meurt.

Le dernier arbre
brûle.

--Valery

The whole green sky is
dying. The last tree flares.

With a great burst of
supernatural rose

Under a canopy of
poisonous airs.

Could we imagine our
return to prayers

To end in time before
time's final throes,

The green sky is dying as
the last tree flares?

But we were young in
judgement, old in years

Who could make peace: but
it was war we chose,

To spread its canopy of
poisoning airs.

Not all our children's
pleas and women's fears

Could steer us from this
hell. And now God knows

His whole green sky is
dying as it flares.

Our crops of wheat have
turned to fields of tares

This dreadful century
staggered to its close

And the sky dies for us,
its poisoned heirs.

All rain was dust. Its
granules were out of tears.

Throats burst as universal
winter rose

To kill the whole green
sky, the last tree bare

Beneath its canopy of
poisoned air.

charles
bukowski:

Communists

we ran the women in a
straight line down the river

clinging to the fear in
their rice-stupid heads

clinging to their
infants

mice-like sucklings
breathing in the air at odds of

one thousand to
one;

we shot the men as they
kneeled in a circle,

and the death of the men
held almost no death,

it was somehow like a
moviefilm,

men of spider arms and
legs and a hunk of cloth

to cover the sexual
organ.

men hardly born could
hardly be killed

and there they were down
there now, finally dead,

the sun straining on their
faces of weird

puzzlement.

some of the women could
fire rifles. we left a small

detachment to decide
upon

them. then we fired up the
unburned huts and moved on

to the next
village.

charles hamilton
sorley:

When you see millions of
the mouthless dead

Across your dreams in pale
battalions go,

Say not soft things as
other men have said,

That you'll remember. For
you need not so.

Give them not praise. For,
deaf, how should they know

It is not curses heaped on
each gashed head?

Nor tears. Their blind
eyes see not your tears flow.

Nor honour. It is easy to
be dead.

Say only this, 'They are
dead.' Then add thereto,

'Yet many a better one has
died before.'

Then, scanning all the
o'ercrowded mass, should you

Perceive one face that you
loved heretofore,

It is a spook. None wears
the face you knew.

Great death had made all
his for evermore.

david ignatow:

All Quiet

How come nobody is being
bombed today?

I want to know, being a
citizen

of this country and a
family man.

You can't take my fate in
your hands,

without informing
me.

I can blow up a bomb or
crush a skull -

whoever started this
peace

without advising
me

through a news
leak

at which I could have
voiced a protest,

running my whole family
off a cliff.

david ray

Propaganda

How quickly the
victors

rewrite
history.

The big lie
works.

Tell it again and
again

loud and clear

as the truth seldom
is.

There was no
massacre

in Tiananmen
Square

says the Chinese state
radio

and within a
week

National Public
Radio

in Washington,
DC,

says they have to
agree,

see no hard
evidence.

It is true - no
massacre

in Tienanmen
Square!

The new truth from
China

is affirmed - "It
never

happened that
soldiers

fired directly

at the people."

But I still can't
get

out of my eyes that
sight

broadcast on TV to
millions -

islands of blood
-

truly a thousand red
islands

in Tienanmen
Square.

We saw it. Yet
now

we are told

it did not
happen

and the kids

are rounded up

as they were in
Budapest.

The Chinese people are
told

it did not
happen.

We are told.

We begin to
forget.

We agree to
forget.

It does not take
long

to fulfill our
contract

to forget.
Bloodstains

on stone - who remembers
them

past a
fortnight?

Not you, not
me,

not the Chinese state
radio,

not the USA state
radio.

How quickly
indeed

the victors
rewrite!

Propaganda works - that is
all

the truth ye
know

and all ye need to
know.

denise
levertov:

What Were They
Like?

(Questions and
Answers)

1) Did the people of Viet
Nam

use lanterns of
stone?

2) Did they hold
ceremonies

to reverence the opening
of buds?

3) Were they inclined to
rippling laughter?

4) Did they use bone and
ivory,

jade and silver, for
ornament?

5) Had they an epic
poem?

6) Did they distinguish
between speech and singing?

1) Sir, their light hearts
turned to stone.

It is not remembered
whether in gardens

stone lanterns illumined
pleasant ways.

2) Perhaps they gathered
once to delight in blossom,

but after the children
were killed

there were no more
buds.

3) Sir, laughter is bitter
to the burned mouth.

4) A dream ago, perhaps.
Ornament is for joy.

All the bones were
charred.

5) It is not remembered.
Remember,

most were peasants; their
life

was in rice and
bamboo.

When peaceful clouds were
reflected in the paddies

and the water-buffalo
stepped surely along terraces,

maybe fathers told their
sons old tales.

When bombs smashed the
mirrors

there was time only to
scream.

6) There is an echo yet,
it is said,

of their speech which was
like a song.

It is reported their
singing resembled

the flight of moths in
moonlight.

Who can say? It is silent
now.

diane di prima:

Les Americains

we are
feral rare

as mountain
wolves

our hearts are
pure

& stupid
we go down

pitted against our
own

duo duo:

When the People Arose from
Cheese

The songs ignored the
blood of revolution.

August tautened like a
cruel bow.

The malevolent son strode
from the hut

with a pouch of tobacco
and a parched throat.

Cruelly blinded, oxen
dragged

blackening corpses behind
them

like distended
drums,

till all the sacrifices
had been hidden away.

In the distance, another
legion approaches.

(trans. Donald
Finkel)

edward thomas:

The Cherry
Trees

The cherry trees bend over
and are shedding,

On the old road where all
that passed are dead,

Their petals, strewing the
grass as for a wedding

This early May morn when
there is none to wed.

eleanor wilner:

Found in the Free
Library

"Write as if you
lived in an occupied country."

--Edwin Rolfe

And we were made afraid,
and being afraid

we made him bigger than he
was, a little man

and ignorant, wrapped like
a vase of glass

in bubble wrap all his
life, who never felt

a single lurch or bump,
carried over

the rough surface of other
lives like

the spoiled children of
the sultans of old

in sedan chairs, on the
backs of slaves,

the gold curtains on the
chair

pulled shut against the
dust and shit

of the road on which the
people walked,

over whose heads, he rode,
no more aware

than a wave that rattles
pebbles on a beach.

And being afraid we forgot
to notice

who pulled his golden
strings, how

their banks overflowed
while

the public coffers
emptied, how

they stole our pensions,
poured their smoke

into our lungs, how they
beat our ploughshares

into swords, sold power to
the lords of oil,

closed their fists to
crush the children

of Iraq, took the future
from our failing grasp

into their hoards, ignored
our votes,

broke our treaties with
the world,

and when our hungry
children cried,

the doctors drugged them
so they wouldn't fuss,

and prisons swelled
enormously to hold

the desperate sons and
daughters of the poor.

To us, they just said war,
and war, and war.

For when they saw we were
afraid,

how knowingly they played
on every fear -

so conned, we scarcely saw
their scorn,

hardly noticed as they
took our funds, our rights,

and tapped our phones,
turned back our clocks,

and then, to quell
dissent, they sent....

(but here the document is
torn)

ellie gunn:

Standing on My Mother's
Grave

The earth, still
raised,

Yields as

I step slowly from side to
side.

Her body untouchable
beneath

In a plain plywood
box.

Tears come, hot and
sad.

Will I ever feel
ready

Waiting my turn

Like she was?

I shoulder a NO WAR sign
from the trunk

And my daughter

Takes my
picture

Standing on my mother's
grave.

emily
dickinson:

There is a pain - so utter
-

It swallows substance up
-

Then covers the Abyss with
Trance -

So memory can
step

Around - across - upon it
-

As one within a swoon
-

Goes safely - where an
open eye -

Would drop Him - Bone by
Bone.

fred nemo:

(after lucas
murray)

in place of a fall
harvest

there will be bodies
buried

and unburied

frederic
manning:

Grotesque

These are the damned
circles Dante trod,

Terrible in
hopelessness,

But even skulls have their
humor,

An eyeless and sardonic
mockery:

And we,

Sitting with streaming
eyes in the acrid smoke,

That murks our foul, damp
billet,

Chant bitterly, with
raucous voices

As a choir of
frogs

In hideous irony, our
patriotic songs.

georg trakl:

Decline

Over the white
pond

The wild birds have
travelled on.

In the evening an icy wind
blows from our stars.

Over our graves

The broken brow of the
night inclines.

Under oak trees we sway in
a silver boat.

Always the town's white
walls resound.

Under arches of
thorns,

O my brother, blind
minute-hands,

We climb towards
midnight.

(trans. Michael
Hamburger)

gu cheng:

Yesterday

Yesterday

coils in the
corner

like a black
snake.

Cold while it
lived,

it's colder
dead.

Once it crept
slowly

over so many
hearts,

leaving a greenish
trail,

concealing
every

trace of blood.

It's dead at
last,

secretly buried
under

mountains of
newsprint.

New hordes of
characters

swarm like
ants,

debating how

to circumvent

the second
coming.

(trans. Donald
Finkel)

h.d.:

from R.A.F.

If I dare
recall

his last swift grave
smile,

I award myself

some inch of
ribbon

for valour,

such as he
wore,

for I am
stricken

as never
before,

by the thought

of ineptitude, sloth,
evil

that prosper,

while such as he
fall.

hayden carruth:

Complaint and
Petition

Mr. President: On a clear
cold

morning I address you from
a remote

margin of your dominion in
plain-

style Yankee quatrains
because

I don't know your exalted
language

of power. I'm thankful for
that. This

is a complaint and
petition, sent

to you in the long-held
right I claim

As a citizen. To
recapitulate your

wrong-doings is
unnecessary; the topic

is large and prominent and
already

occupies the attention of
historians

and political scholars,
whose findings

will in the near future
expose your

incontinent and maniacal
ambition

for all to see. Let it
suffice to

say that you have warped
the law and

flouted the will and
wisdom of the

people as no other has
before you.

You have behaved precisely
as a tin-pot

tyrant in any benighted,
inglorious

corner of the earth. And
now you are

deviously and corruptly
manipulating

events in order to create
war.

Let us speak plainly. You
wish to

murder millions, as you
yourself

have said, to appease your
fury. We

oppose such an agenda: we,
the people,

artists, artisans,
builders, makers,

honest American men and
women,

especially the poets, for
whom I dare

to speak. We say, desist,
resign,

hide yourself in your own
shame,

lest otherwise the evil
you have

loosed will destroy
everything

and love will quit the
world.

henrik
visnapuu:

Lilac Time

Lilacs in the barrels of
the guns:

Lilacs, lilac
blooms.

My friends are fallen, are
fallen

In lilac time.

Peering through blooms of
lilac

The sniper
tensed.

Spring burst out in lilac
blooms to meet us

Across the field of
slain.

Lilac trees behind the
little houses -

Lilac trees.

Drowsy lilac bushes round
our home -

Our charred
home.

We marched to war in lilac
time,

The lilac
spring;

Bayonets glinting through
the lilac sprays,

The lilac
sprays.

We read our luck in lilac
blooms of five,

In lilac
blooms.

Life spoke to death in
lilac blooms of five,

In lilac
blooms.

(trans. Andres
Pranspill)

homer:

from The Iliad

Curs'd is the man, and
void of law and right,

Unworthy property,
unworthy light,

Unfit for public rule, or
private care,

That wretch, that monster,
that delights in war:

Whose lust is murder, and
whose horrid joy

To tear his country, and
his kind destroy!

(trans. Alexander
Pope)

ingeborg
bachman:

Every Day

War is no longer
declared,

but simply continued. The
unheard of

has become the everyday.
The hero

keeps clear of battles.
The weak

are pushed to the front
lines.

The uniform of the day is
patience,

the decoration the paltry
star

of hope above the
heart.

It's awarded

when nothing more
happens,

when drum-fire
ceases,

when the enemy becomes
invisible

and the shadow of eternal
armament

covers the sky.

It's awarded

for desertion of
flags,

for courage in the face of
the friend,

for betraying unworthy
secrets

and disregard

of every
command.

(trans. Daniel
Huws)

ion caraion:

At The Rotton
Sea

We shall torture you, we
shall kill you and we shall laugh

then we will be killed and
others will laugh

we are old enough and
shrewd enough

not to care

everything is truth, even
the lie

everything is lie, even
truth -

darkness begets
itself.

(trans. Dorian and
Urdang)

james schevill

Rat-Hunt for
Terrorists

I walk my hate and let it
harden there,

A plastic bomb to blast
his hide-out high.

My time to purify the
glowing air.

Search out that traitor
with his injured stare

Whose terror causes
innocence to die.

I walk my hate and let it
harden there.

Answer his terror with the
terror

Of my bomb, explosion
answers every why.

My time to purify the
glowing air.

Often at night I hear him
scuttling to scare

Us from our longing dream
of liberty.

I walk my hate and let it
harden there.

Blow up his secret holes,
strip him bare

Until his silence breaks
into a cry.

My time to purify the
glowing air.

We'll meet in rat-hunts in
one burning glare,

Traitor and patriot fused
in the bursting sky.

I walk my hate and let it
harden there.

My time to purify the
glowing air.

jános
pilinszky:

Three-Coloured
Banner

The first color? Just like
a captive

at the moment sentenced is
passed.

The second? Like
lost

soldiers falling
down

in huge, soft
heaps.

And the third? The colour
of the third -

it is you.

My beautiful
three-coloured banner!

(trans. Peter
Jay)

jesse
bernstein:

from Main Street
USA

It is all monotonous: the
murder, the giant mice, the marching bands. It's a setup. Setup
meaning everything is prearranged: the festive atmosphere, the
killing, even the stars, everything that's said and felt here is
rehearsed. Also, the clockwork life on Main Street is a setup for
annihilation. Life on Main Street is the prototype for life all over
America. Everything fits nice like a jigsaw puzzle - when the picture
is done, it will be a picture of a sour empty planet. America has
been a setup for suicide/global destruction from the start. Slaphappy
clowns, lovable cops, politicians like take-charge dads from TV. We
all fit into the picture puzzle somewhere. Guns to the temple,
unbearable grinning - we'll get the signal.

jim shugrue:

On A Photograph of a
Severed Hand

What is the sound of one
hand

lying in the middle of a
road

waving goodbye to its lost
body?

How has it come this far
from a hand

to mouth
existence? How did it earn

its crust of
callus? Is this

the right hand or the
left? I cannot

tell. This is a
photograph of a hand;

they could print it either
way.

I've never seen a hand,
alone,

open and empty in the
middle

of a road, and pray to the
god

they tell me has us
all

in his good hands never to
see one.

I know what history
is. Our hand-

me-down bodies are mostly
water,

and we spend them in tears
and sweat.

Here is my
hand. Take it,

and give me yours, while
we

are still
attached.

judith wright:

Weapon

The will to power destroys
the power to will.

The weapon made, we cannot
help but use it;

it drags us with its own
momentum still.

The power to kill
compounds the need to kill.

Grown out of hand, the
heart cannot refuse it;

the will to power undoes
the power to will.

Though as we strike we
cry, "I did not choose it",

it drags us with its own
momentum still.

In the one stroke we win
the world and lose it.

The will to power destroys
the power to will.

kenneth patchen

The Lions of Fire Shall
Have Their Hunting

The lions of
fire

Shall have their hunting
in this black land

Their teeth shall tear at
your soft throats

Their claws
kill

O the lions of fire shall
awake

And the valleys steam with
their fury

Because you are sick with
the dirt of your money

Because you are pigs
rooting in the swill of your war

Because you are mean and
sly and full of the pus of your pious murder

Because you have turned
your faces from God

Because you have spread
your filth everywhere

O the lions of
fire

Wait in the crawling
shadows of your world

And their terrible eyes
are watching you

kojo laing:

from The same
corpse

And the pounded man is the
pounded country,

arrest me-O, don't arrest
me-O

I will still live below
your politics, cutting

the roots whenever I can,
burning the pride with the ironies of history.

You cry I laugh, you laugh
I cry, and

when the flag was upside
down, no one noticed,

for the amazingly tasty
fufu

had finally shrivelled the
jaws that ate it.

lawrence
ferlinghetti:

Speak Out

And a vast paranoia sweeps
across the land

And America turns the
attack on its Twin Towers

Into the beginning of the
Third World War

The war with the Third
World

And the terrorists in
Washington

Are drafting all the young
men

And no one speaks

And they are rousting
out

All the ones with
turbans

And they are flushing
out

All the strange
immigrants

And they are shipping all
the young men

To the killing fields
again

And no one speaks

And when they come to
round up

All the great writers and
poets and painters

The National Endowment of
the Arts of Complacency

Will not speak

While all the young
men

Will be killing all the
young men

In the killing fields
again

So now is the time for you
to speak

All you lovers of
liberty

All you lovers of the
pursuit of happiness

All you lovers and
sleepers

Deep in your private
dreams

Now is the time for you to
speak

O silent majority

Before they come for
you

lawson inada:

The Legend of
Protest

The F.B.I. swooped in
early,

taking our elders in the
process -

for "subversive" that and
this.

People ask, "Why didn't
you protest?"

Well, you might say: "They
had hostages."

lenore kandel

from First They
Slaughtered the Angels

First they slaughtered the
angels

tying their thin white
legs with wire cords

and

opening their silk throats
with icy knives

They died fluttering their
wings like chickens

and their immortal blood
wet the burning earth...

lily brett:

Children II

There

were

thin children

fat children

brown-eyed

children

blue-eyed

green-eyed

wide-eyed
children

you'd

think

it was harder

to

kill

the children

it

was

easy

they

were

flung in the
air

for

target

practice

had

their heads

broken

against

the nearest

wall

they

bent others

across their
knees

like

twigs

snapping their
backs

the lucky ones

walked with their
mothers

to the gas.

lisa bernstein:

Inscribed

As in the
bible,

where one massacre
precedes another,

she was born with her
father's war

in her body.

There in the damp, clayey
flesh:

a yellow field of
grain

where the men lie
bleeding.

Her father
recognized

the yielding piece of
land

he had walked on after the
bombing,

stepping carefully through
the wheat sheaves,

the dismembered

as slick as
newborns.

He held her
body

in his arms. When she was
wet,

sometimes he thought she
was bleeding

from the killing he
saw.

He tilted the warm
bottle

into her mouth.

lisa steinman:

The Old Woman's
Poem

All summer the crows
yelled at me from trees

in praise of the
immaterial. Surly

I was by
fall. The laundramat sign read:

'Re-grand
opening'. And the world did open,

garden notebooks filling
with weeds:

meadow rue, lady's mantle,
the first page

left blank for
Elijah. Just in case. Though

the papers lamented the
weapons of mass

destruction, as if
destruction did not

occur to us one by
one. Now passing

cars sing in warm rain,
but not well, what with

their tin ears, petulant
and off-kilter.

I wake up with a furrowed
heart. I am

as cultivated as the
delicate

smell of carrots thinned
early. I can taste

my
childhood. Look: a small figure
dances

in the
yard. No, look: it's me. No, I'm
here

rehearsing the dance in
memory, trying

to imagine an older
woman's life.

Somehow I've come to feel
such an untoward

affection for my younger
self, I could

just
cry. Instead, I thin carrots, hearing

crows, living carefully .
. . as if I might

otherwise forget to wake,
eat, breathe.

lucille
clifton:

buffalo war

war over

everybody gone
home

nobody dead

everybody dying

lynn martin:

Cherry tree, holder of ten
thousand

blossoms, ignites into a
city of flames,

a candle at every window.
I would

have let you glow like
that, calm.

burning your own beauty
until

you were nothing but
light. For days

in rain and sun you would
tremble,

perhaps. I would take you
to places

open, where the yellow
field widened

where the river loosened
its tied-back

hair over its shoulders.
There I would

say, live, flash until you
become lake.

mang ke:

A Fallen Tree

On the branches of a
fallen tree

a shroud of snow is
melting

like the flesh of a
corpse.

It halts me in my
tracks,

afraid to come
near.

I stand at a
distance

staring,
staring

until, at last,

when all the snow has
melted,

I can see its skeleton on
the ground.

(trans. Donald
Finkel)

margareta
waterman:

insult: warlords
condescend to speak of poetry

lend us your magic, o
poets, to serve our propaganda

every day, in the
paper

in any town in this
country

every day, in the
paper

degradation of language so
horrific

no word can mean
anything

because public
words

are so far

from ever meaning what
they say

we all know these lies are
lies

we read this newspeak,
find the hidden facts

we all know that this
government wasn't honestly elected

that it has no respect for
us, no interest

in the public
interest

that greed beyond sanity
is its only value

we all know what the
papers don't dare print

but don't expect
poets

whose life is language and
the clean use of words

to contribute to the
hypocrisy

marina
tsvetaeva

As you fought for your
fatherland

You scratched Marina on
your knife.

I was the first and also
the last

In all the magnificence of
your life.

I remember the night and
your brilliant face

Enclosed in a military
boxcar's hell.

I let my hair fly in the
wind's wild chase.

In a chest I store your
epaulettes well.

(trans. David
McDuff)

mark twain:

Next the statesmen will
invent cheap lies,

putting the blame upon the
nation that is attacked,

and every man will be glad
of those conscience-soothing falsities,

and will diligently study
them,

and refuse to examine any
refutations of them;

and thus he will by and by
convince himself that the war is just,

and will thank God for the
better sleep he enjoys

after this process of
grotesque self-deception.

michael casey:

A Bummer

We were going single
file

Through his rice
paddies

And the farmer

Started hitting the lead
track

With a rake

He wouldn't
stop

The TC went to talk to
him

And the farmer

Tried to hit him
too

So the tracks went
sideways

Side by side

Through the guy's
fields

Instead of single
file

Hard On, Proud
Mary

Bummer, Wallace,
Rosemary's Baby

The Rutgers Road
Runner

And

Go Get Em-Done Got
Em

Went side by
side

Through the
fields

If you have a farm in
Vietnam

And a house in
hell

Sell the farm

And go home

miroslav holub:

The Fly

She sat on a willow
trunk

watching

part of the battle of
Crécy,

the shouts,

the gasps,

the groans,

the tramping and the
tumbling.

During the fourteenth
charge

of the French
cavalry

she mated

with a brown-eyed male
fly

from
Vadincourt.

She rubbed her legs
together

as she sat on a
disembowelled horse

meditating

on the immortality of
flies.

With relief she
alighted

on the blue
tongue

of the Duke of
Clervaux.

When silence
settled

and only the whisper of
decay

softly circled the
bodies

and only

a few arms and
legs

still twitched jerkily
under the trees,

she began to lay her
eggs

on the single
eye

of Johann Uhr,

the Royal
Armourer.

And thus it was

that she was eaten by a
swift

fleeing

from the fires of
Estrées.

(trans. George
Theiner)

mohandas
gandhi:

You assist an evil system
most effectively

by obeying its orders and
decrees.

An evil system never
deserves such allegiance.

Allegiance to it means
partaking of the evil.

A good person will resist
an evil system with his or her whole soul.

naomi lazard:

Ordinance on
Arrival

Welcome to you

who have managed to get
here.

It's been a terrible
trip;

you should be happy you
have survived it.

Statistics prove that not
many do.

You would like a bath, a
hot meal,

a good night's sleep. Some
of you

need medical
attention.

None of this is
available.

These things have always
been

in short supply;
now

they are impossible to
obtain.

This is not

a temporary
solution;

it is
permanent.

Our condolences on your
disappointment.

It is not our
responsibility

everything you have heard
about this place

is false. It is not our
fault

you have been
deceived,

ruined your health getting
here.

For reasons beyond our
control

there is no vehicle
out.

nelly sachs:

Already embraced by the
arm of heavenly solace

The insane mother
stands

With the tatters of her
torn mind

With the charred tinders
of her burnt mind

Burying her dead
child,

Burying her lost
light,

Twisting her hands into
urns,

Filling them with the body
of her child from the air,

Filling them with his
eyes, his hair from the air,

And with his fluttering
heart -

Thern she kisses the
air-born being

And dies!

(trans. Michael
Roloff)

osip
mandelstam:

You took away all the
oceans and all the room,

You gave me my shoe-size
in earth with bars around it.

Where did it get you?
Nowhere.

You left me my lips, and
they shape words, even in silence.

(trans. Brown and
Merwin)

paul celan:

Crystal

Not on my lips look for
your mouth,

not in front of the gate
for the stranger,

not in the eye for the
tear.

Seven nights higher red
makes for red,

seven hearts deeper the
hand knocks on the gate,

seven roses later plashes
the fountain.

(trans. Michael
Hamburger)

philip dacey:

Found Sonnet: Remarks
Overheard at the Wall (Washington, D. C.)

Do you have someone
here? Let me try

a different lens. Before
we were born.

There it is. You mean all
those people died?

We're underground. The war
we didn't win.

They had a great big
article on him. Oh

my god. Everything's
picked up at the end of the day

and catalogued. This is
not a TV show.

It was his first
assignment. No fucking way.

Take a picture of us in
the reflection. They're

not buried here. The order
of death. It's simple.

This one could be a girl.
He was making a career

out of it. Are you looking
at this at all?

Excuse me. These walls are
getting higher.

I've been here before. I
can't believe it.
My brother.

ralph chaplin:

Mourn Not the
Dead

Mourn not the dead that in
the cool earth lie -

Dust unto dust
-

The calm sweet earth that
mothers all who die

As all men
must;

Mourn not your captive
comrades who must dwell -

Too strong to strive
-

Each in his steel-bound
coffin of a cell,

Buried alive;

But rather mourn the
apathetic throng -

The cowed and the meek
-

Who see the world's great
anguish and its wrong

And dare not
speak!

randall jarrell

The Death of the Ball
Turret Gunner

>From my mother's sleep
I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly
til my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth,
loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and
the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me
out of the turret with a hose.

richard hugo:

On Hearing a New
Escalation

>From time one I've
been reading slaughter.

seeing the same bewildered
face of a child

staring at nothing beside
his dead mother

in Egypt, the pyramid
blueprints approved,

the phrases of national
purpose streaming

from the mouth of some
automated sphynx.

Day on day, the same
photographed suffering,

the bitterness, the
opportune hate handed down

from Xerxes to Nixon, a
line strong

as transatlantic cable and
stale ideals.

Killing's still in though
glory is out of style.

And what does it come to,
this blood cold

in the streets and a
history book printed

and bound with such
cost-saving American

methods, the names and
dates are soon bones?

Beware certain words:
Enemy. Liberty. Freedom.

Believe those sounds and
you're aiming a bomb.

robert
peterson:

Ansbach

I listened to the
guns

and shook

while Scobey
bled

simply blinking
swiftly

at the leaves

as if only

shocked

that the shell

should throw

his glasses and his
steel

up

to the sun

leave him
lightheaded

running
breathless

among the
aspens

robert pinsky:

BEFORE DISASTER (Yvor
Winters, 1900-1967)

Evening traffic homeward
burns

Swift and even on the
turns,

Drifting weight in triple
rows,

Fixed relation and
repose.

This one edges out and
by,

Inch by inch with steady
eye.

But should error be
increased,

Mass and moment are
released;

Matter loosens, flooding
blind,

Levels drivers to its
kind.

Ranks of nations thus
descend,

Watchful, to a stormy
end.

By a moment's calm
beguiled,

I have got a wife and
child.

Fool and scoundrel guide
the State.

Peace is whore to Greed
and Hate.

Nowhere may I turn to
flee:

Action is
security.

Treading change with
savage heel,

We must live or die by
steel.

robinson
jeffers:

Eagle Valor, Chicken
Mind

Unhappy country, what
wings you have! Even here,

Nothing important to
protect, and ocean-far from the nearest enemy, what a
cloud

Of bombers amazes the
coast mountain, what a hornet-swarm of fighters,

And day and night the guns
practicing.

Unhappy, eagle wings and
beak, chicken brain.

Weep (it is frequent in
human affairs), weep for the terrible magnificence of the
means,

The ridiculous
incompetence of the reasons, the bloody and shabby

Pathos of the
result.

saul yurkievich

Sentence

doesn't read what he
should

thinks what he
shouldn't

doesn't say what he
should

writes what he
shouldn't

shouldn't read

shouldn't think

shouldn't speak

shouldn't write

should read what he
should

should think what he
should

should say what he
should

should write what he
should

what he shouldn't do is
read

what he shouldn't do is
think

what he shouldn't do is
speak

what he shouldn't do is
write

doesn't live as he
should

lives but
shouldn't

shouldn't live

(trans. Cola
Franzen)

simone weil:

The winning of battles is
not determined

by men who plan and
deliberate,

who make a resolution and
carry it out,

but by men drained of
these faculties,

transformed,

fallen either to the level
of inert matter,

which is all
passivity,

or to the level of blind
forces,

which are all
momentum.

stanley kunitz:

Day of
Foreboding

Great events are about to
happen.

I have seen migratory
birds

in unprecedented
numbers

descend on the coastal
plain,

picking the margins
clean.

My bones are a family in
their tent

huddled over a small
fire

waiting for the uncertain
signal

to resume the long
march.

steve mason:

My soul just
did

what most souls
did.

just disappeared one
afternoon

when I was in a
firefight.

Just "walked away" in the
scuffle

like a Dunhill
lighter

off the deck of a redneck
bar...

taban lo
liyong:

blood iron and
trumpets

blood iron and
trumpets

forward we
march

(others fall on the
way)

blood iron and
trumpets

blood iron and
trumpets

we shall hack to kill and
cure

blood iron and
trumpets

singers of the datsun
blue

forward we drive breaking
the records

blood iron and
trumpets

let bullets find their
targets and the earth be softened

blood iron and
trumpets

let the dogs of war
rejoice

and the carrion birds
feed

we are reducing population
sexplosion

blood iron and
trumpets

the uniformed machines are
around

put on your helmet iron
and the rest

blood iron and
trumpets

only thru fire can we be
baptized to mean business

so once again

blood iron and
trumpets

we shall always march
along

blood iron and
trumpets

blood iron and
trumpets

blood alone

tadeusz
rozewicz:

Leave Us Alone

Forget about us

about our
generation

live like human
beings

forget about us

we envied

plants and
stones

we envied dogs

I would like to be a
rat

I used to say to
her

I would like not to
be

I would like to fall
asleep

and wake up after the
war

she would say with her
eyes shut

forget about us

don't ask about our
youth

leave us alone

tsuboi shigeji

Silent, but ...

I may be silent,
but

I'm thinking.

I may not talk,
but

Don't mistake me for a
wall.

(trans. Bownan and
Thwaite)

w. b. yeats:

We can't see. But feel
some awful thing

We had fed the heart on
fantasies,

The heart's grown brutal
from the fare;

More substance in our
enmities

Than in our
love...

w. s. merwin:

Statement

It would not have been
possible for me ever to trust someone who

acquired office by the
shameful means Mr. Bush and his abettors resorted

to in the last
presidential election. His nonentity was rapidly becoming

more apparent than ever
when the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001, provided

him and his handlers with
a role for him, that of "wartime leader",

which they, and he in
turn, were quick to exploit. This role was used at

once to silence all
criticism of the man and his words as unpatriotic,

and to provide the
auspices for a sustained assault upon civil

liberties, environmental
protections, and general welfare. The

perpetuation of this role
of "wartime leader" is the primary reason--

more important even than
the greed for oil fields and the wish to blot

out his father's failure--
for the present determination to visit war

upon Iraq, kill and maim
countless people, and antagonize much of the

world of which Mr. Bush
had not heard until recently. The real

iniquities of Saddam
Hussein should be recognized, in this context, as

the pretexts they are. His
earlier atrocities went unmentioned as long

as he was an ally of
former Republican administrations, which were

happy, in their time, to
supply him with weapons. I think that someone

who was maneuvered into
office against the will of the electorate, as

Mr. Bush was, should be
allowed to make no governmental decisions

(including judicial
appointments) that might outlast his questionable

term, and if the reasons
for war were many times greater than they have

been said to be I would
oppose any thing of the kind under such

"leadership". To arrange a
war in order to be re-elected outdoes even

the means employed in the
last presidential election. Mr. Bush and his